se and Maggie Donahue's. The scabs
and their protectors made a stand, drawing revolvers. From their hard,
determined faces--fighting men by profession--Saxon could augur nothing
but bloodshed and death. An elderly man, evidently the leader, lifted a
soft felt hat and mopped the perspiration from the bald top of his head.
He was a large man, very rotund of belly and helpless looking. His gray
beard was stained with streaks of tobacco juice, and he was smoking
a cigar. He was stoop-shouldered, and Saxon noted the dandruff on the
collar of his coat.

One of the men pointed into the street, and several of his companions
laughed. The cause of it was the little Olsen boy, barely four years
old, escaped somehow from his mother and toddling toward his economic
enemies. In his right he bore a rock so heavy that he could scarcely
lift it. With this he feebly threatened them. His rosy little face was
convulsed with rage, and he was screaming over and over "Dam scabs!
Dam scabs! Dam scabs!" The laughter with which they greeted him only
increased his fury. He toddled closer, and with a mighty exertion threw
the rock. It fell a scant six feet beyond his hand.

This much Saxon saw, and also Mrs. Olsen rushing into the street for
her child. A rattling of revolver-shots from the strikers drew Saxon's
attention to the men beneath her. One of them cursed sharply and
examined the biceps of his left arm, which hung limply by his side. Down
the hand she saw the blood beginning to drip. She knew she ought not
remain and watch, but the memory of her fighting forefathers was with
her, while she possessed no more than normal human fear--if anything,
less. She forgot her child in the eruption of battle that had broken
upon her quiet street. And she forgot the strikers, and everything else,
in amazement at what had happened to the round-bellied, cigar-smoking
leader. In some strange way, she knew not how, his head had become
wedged at the neck between the tops of the pickets of her fence. His
body hung down outside, the knees not quite touching the ground. His hat
had fallen off, and the sun was making an astounding high light on his
bald spot. The cigar, too, was gone. She saw he was looking at her. One
hand, between the pickets, seemed waving at her, and almost he seemed to
wink at her jocosely, though she knew it to be the contortion of deadly
pain.

Possibly a second, or, at most, two seconds, she gazed at this, when she
was aroused by Bert